Wounds
by Nathan-Daystorm
Summary: A young boy dies in the crucible of torment....


Wounds

Disclaimer:  I don't own London.  I do own the characters and details of this story, but you know the drill by now, so I'm not going to bore you, lol.

Summary:  Just something I did to fight boredom.  Sort of a little piece of back-story on a character for a great LXG RPG I'm a player at.  Told in first person and written while listening to "My Immortal" by Evanescence.

I am…well, what does my name really matter?  It isn't like you could understand what I'm saying anyway.  No, don't leave.  Fine, if I really must have a name, then…well, I am in London, and "when in Rome" and all that…Gabriel.  Yes, I think that fits.  Gabriel Monroe.  Yes, that suites me well enough.  I am Gabriel Monroe.  There, now you have my name.

Who am I?  Yes, I suppose that doesn't really explain who I am, now does it?  That's really too bad, because that is all you get.  What am I doing here?  …That is a long, long story.  I suppose you do have time to listen, don't you?  It isn't like the two of you have any prior engagements to consider.  Fine, I'll tell you.  It isn't a pretty story…though it does begin much like a fairy tale….

Once upon a time…yes, that's how it starts…once upon a time there was a boy.  He was young and innocent, pained by a loss deeper than he could fathom at that time.  What was it?  That is rather irrelevant…oh, fine.  His parents had confessed to him that they were not his real parents… that they had lied to him all his life when he'd asked.  Oh, he had asked.  Not as a child, not really, but as he got older and realized he looked nothing like either of his parents, he began to question.  Each time, they would lie and tell him that it wasn't unusual for children to look nothing like their parents.  He would accept their answer each time, but secretly he would wonder…he would wonder why he was the only child he knew in that situation.

So, when he found out, he naturally felt wronged.  He left home as swiftly as he possibly could, trying and failing not to look back.  Looking was all he did, though.  He was adamant about never returning to that place, and he held to that.

It was this boy that wandered, alone, cold, lonely, and scared, down roads that most people with any true knowledge of travel would not come near.  This boy had no such knowledge, no preparations, and by the time he reached any decent town, he had been robbed and beaten on several occasions.

It was on one of these occasions that he met **her**.  He had been rummaging for food in an alley when two men had spotted him.  Truthfully, they looked far better off than he did, but they were drunk and wanted a fight.  They began to beat him mercilessly, until **she** came striding into the alley.  She single handedly dispatched the drunkards, leaving them unconscious to sleep off their drinks.  From there she took the boy to her temporary home and cared for him until he was back to full health.  During that period of time, the boy became smitten with her, and it is his firm belief that she felt the same way about him.

Her name was Michelle.  She was an English woman, with beautiful brown hair that flowed in waves down her shoulders and tickled when they brushed against the boy's skin.  They were so soft and always smelled of some wonderful fragrance, despite her treks through less than wonderful conditions.  She was an explorer, and a restless one at that.  They met each other frequently for several weeks after the boy had healed, and it was during that time that the boy grew truly attached to her.  When finding out that she planned on leaving for another expedition soon, the boy begged her to let him join her.

She was so overjoyed that he would want to that she didn't think at first to argue.  After the fact, when she tried, he would simply smile and say that he was already packed.  She would always hide her smile with a harrumph and playfully strike his arm, and he would always smile afterwards and offer his arm for a stroll.  She would take it, and they would discuss all matter of things as the sun warmed their bodies, or the moon blazed a path for them through the dark night.

She taught the boy how to fight, both with his hands and twin daggers.  When it came time to leave for the expedition, the two journeyed with light hearts, and they had several small adventures over the course of the next year.  All the while they grew closer, their hearts warming them at all times, whether they were together or not.  They were so close that merely the thought of one another would be enough to warm them better than any fire.

The boy was planning something, which Michelle thought was both amusing and obvious.  What wasn't obvious was just **what** he was up to.  The only clue she had was his insistence that he keep an emerald they had discovered in a recent dig.  It was shaped like an elongated, exaggerated teardrop, and Michelle had not seen it since he'd pocketed it a week prior.  That in and of itself was not what troubled her; it was that she didn't see as much of the boy that worried her.  She was concerned that something had happened to him, something that he couldn't share with her.  The only thing that he would ever keep from her was something dangerous, something that he didn't want to drag her into for fear of harm to her person.

Several weeks later, she finally confronted the boy about this, and he laughed and kissed her passionately.  She had returned the kiss a bit uneasily, now more than ever concerned that something bad was happening to the boy.  After the kiss, he told her to close her eyes for a moment, that he had a surprise for her.  She began to protest, but he had simply placed his index and middle fingers over her mouth, shushing her with a gentle touch.  She closed her eyes then, though told him she would be opening them in less than a minute if he didn't say she could earlier.  It took him half a minute to do exactly that, and she gasped at the image that greeted her:  The boy, on one knee, holding out a beautiful pendant made of the emerald.  At the bottom of the emerald, facing out, two images were carved.  The first was the shape of a heart, while within that heart was the shape of a snake, a symbol he had for some reason taken as his own before she had met him.  "Michelle…my love, my soul, my heart, my everything…will you please do me the honor of making me the happiest man in all the world?  Will you marry me?"  Her lips had parted to allow more breath to enter her body, her pulse had quickened, and tears had leapt to her eyes.  For a moment the boy knew fear like he had never felt before:  Fear that she would reject him.

Instead, he was greeted with her happy arms being flung around his neck and repeated mutterings of the word "Yes," between happy sobs.  Joyous tears sprang to his eyes as well, and he held her tightly to his body as together they celebrated what, for them, was the first day of the rest of their life together.  They remained that way for several hours, until finally they knew they had to announce who would be the best man and maid of honor.  The couple had made many friends, but both knew instantly whom they wanted for the roles.  They made the announcement, and all seemed right with the world.

Happiness never lasts in this cruel world of ours, and the boy had to learn that the hard way.  Two weeks after they announced their wedding to their friends, the boy was coming home from speaking to the priest that was to marry them.  He heard some excited murmurs and felt a bit off, but he merely shrugged it off as jittery nervousness.  When he returned home, he was greeted with the fact that his odd feelings were far, far more than that.

He stepped into his house with a happy smile on his face; arms wide open to embrace his soon-to-be wife.  Instead, he embraced a pain the likes of which he had never experienced before, a pain that he likens to this day to be hellfire ripping through ones soul.  Michelle, his love, his soul, his heart, his everything…had been gutted and strung up in front of the kitchen doorway…literally.  He gazed at her innards; sorrowful wails the likes of which even Banshees would shy in terror from tore forth from his lips as he cradled her dead body in his arms.  Blood was pooling all around him, and he didn't seem to notice or care.  The only thing that mattered to him at that moment was Michelle.  He couldn't lose her; she was the best and only thing in his life!  She was his love…his heart…his everything…she couldn't die.

Yet she had.  She lay dead in his arms, no breath entering her lungs, no happy smiles alighting her face.  After a night and a day of the crying and wailing, the boy could not do either any longer.  His throat was raw and his eyes were dry, no wails or tears escaping from either.  He gazed at her long and hard, as if expecting her, by some miracle, to heal and embrace him as if nothing had ever happened.  The boy reached out a shaky hand, after hours of merely staring at her body, and removed the pendant from around her neck.  He saw then the mark that sent him into a rage more powerful and frenzied than even the Berserker warriors of old.  He saw the personal crest of his closest friend, the man he had trusted to be his best man, carved into her skin just underneath where the pendant had hung.

He flew out of his house like a demon straight out of the pit and tore down the streets, asking everyone and anyone if they knew where the man had gone.  The bastard had left clues to where he was going to be next!  The boy flew from the town, tracking the movements of the man for the next several years.  With each stop he made, he discovered a new clue that told him that the man had been one step ahead of him.  With each clue, the trail grew colder and colder, until finally no clues were to be found.  The boy sank into a year of depression and drinking, planning to drink himself into Hell and suffer there for the rest of eternity.

It took another year, but he discovered that the man he had been tracking for so long had turned up in London.  The boy was no longer a boy, and at the age of twenty-four should have been a man.  Instead, he was merely the shell of what he was once, a body without a soul, fueled and animated only by rage and the desire for vengeance.  When he discovered the man's location, the boy made haste for that city as fast as possible.

Once there, he established himself as an information broker, a source of information for the right price.  He wanted to be privy to every little bit of information that ever made it's way to the ears of any being living within the city.  In that manner, he hoped he could find the whereabouts of the man that he had sought for so long.

His determination paid off in one year's time.  He had been gathering clues the entire year, and finally put together an address for the man.  It didn't take long for the boy to find him.

It was **not** so, however, for the man's death.  That was a prolonged manifestation of the boy's hatred and rage and as such, took **hours**.  He left then, leaving what little there was of a body to be chewed away by the rats.

Which is, I'm sure, what drew the two of you to this alley.  So I'll leave you to it.

Who was the boy?

I told you already…I am Gabriel Monroe.  Before that…there is a dead boy, a dead boy that was once young and innocent.


End file.
